No Love For This Promise-Breaker

[Blind Gossip] This superstar made lots of promises to help these people in a foreign country, and received tons of publicity as a result. However, you would be hard-pressed to find locals who still have a lot of love for her. That’s because when the publicity waned, so did her interest in helping. She has almost completely abandoned the project, leaving locals even worse off than they were before she got there.

Madonna has managed to screw over just about everyone in her “support” of Malawi. Starting in 2006, she adopted two children, David Banda and Mercy james by circumventing the country’s usual standards for adoption, which angered many people.

Then she promised to build a girl’s school, and raised $14 million to do so, but the whole plan went south amid poor management and corruption, and the money disappeared. From The Daily Mail:

Once dubbed Saint Madonna of Malawi, the American singer is now at the centre of an astonishing feud in the land to which David Livingstone, the British missionary, first brought Christianity almost 150 years ago.

It involves allegations of sexual shenanigans, millions of dollars squandered on parties and high-living and claims that Madonna was allowed to adopt her Malawian children — she also took on a girl called Mercy James, now five — on the basis of promises that are, so far, unfulfilled.

And at the centre of the scandal is the fact that the school Madonna promised to build here has been abandoned. Where it should have been standing, this week there was nothing but a dusty field

In the process, Madonna screwed over a bunch of poor farmers. Her plans to build a girls school in reportedly left 200 families in the area without homes or food. At the start of the project, families were forced to sell their land to make way for the proposed development. Now, after the failure to complete the girls academy, that land is said to have been rendered useless

Villagers in Malawi are claiming a failed multi-million dollar girls school project financially backed by pop star Madonna has cheated them out of valuable farmland.

More than 200 families in Chinkhota allege they were forced to sell their combined 117 acres of land to government officials to make way for the Material Girl’s state-of-the-art academy.

But the project was beset by spiraling costs, mismanagement and allegations of corruption – collapsing in 2011 with the entire board of her Raising Malawi charity sacked.

But the once productive land from the failed first project, which used to be the ‘bread basket’ of the area, is now said to be useless.

Locals complain they are unable to cultivate their crops and the desolate landscape is now due to be turned into a cemetery for national heroes.

Since she hasn’t wasted away enough money and pissed off enough people, Madonna is now jumping back into the Malawi mess. She publicly announced plans earlier this year to open 10 schools… without consulting with anyone in Malawi! From The Guardian:

Education officials in Malawi have attacked Madonna for unveiling plans to build 10 schools in the country, a year after she was forced to scrap a project to build a girls’ academy.

But John Bisika, Malawi’s national secretary for education, science and technology, told the Guardian: “We have had no written or verbal communication. We just read about it in the papers. I don’t understand how she can work like that. For someone to go to the papers and say, ‘I’m building schools’, without telling the government, I find it a strange way of working.”

He added: “When will she build these schools? How will we know where these schools are needed? I wouldn’t just go to the UK and start building schools.”

Bad girl, Madge! Then again, what does she care? So she frittered away millions of dollars and screwed over 200+ poor families and adopted some orphans that weren’t really orphans. Big deal. She got tons of publicity. She got the kids she wanted. Let everyone else clean up her mess.